"that Operation Wide Receiver (2006–2007) and Operation Fast and Furious (2009–2010) had allowed guns to ""walk"" into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. The ATF began Project Gunrunner as a pilot project in Laredo, Texas, in 2005 and expanded it as a national initiative in 2006. Project Gunrunner is also part of the Department of Justice's broader Southwest Border Initiative, which seeks to reduce cross-border drug and firearms trafficking and the high level of violence associated with these activities on both sides of the border. ATF had determined that the Mexican cartels had become the leading gun trafficking organizations operating"
"killed by guns linked to the operation. Reflecting on the operation, Attorney General Eric Holder said that the United States government is ""...losing the battle to stop the flow of illegal guns to Mexico,"" and that the effects of Operation Fast and Furious will most likely continue to be felt for years, as more walked guns appear at Mexican crime scenes. In April 2011, a large cache of weapons, 40 traced to Fast and Furious but also including military-grade weapons difficult to obtain legally in the US such as an anti-aircraft machine gun and grenade launcher, was found in the"
"not provided details at the time. Morales stated, ""At no time did we know or were we made aware that there might have been arms trafficking permitted. In no way would we have allowed it, because it is an attack on the safety of Mexicans."" In addition, she expressed that allowing weapons to ""walk"" would represent a ""betrayal"" of Mexico. Morales said that her office would search ""to the end"" in order to clarify what happened in Fast and Furious. In November 2011, it was reported that the Mexican Attorney General's office was seeking the extradition of six citizens of"
"government. In March 2015, BBC TV programme ""This World"" broadcast an episode entitled ""Secrets of Mexico's Drug War"" which reported on the US government's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Operation Fast and Furious which had allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal buyers acting on behalf of Mexican drug cartel leaders, in particular the Sinaloa Cartel. The BBC also reported on Vicente Zambada Niebla's claims of immunity from prosecution under a deal between the Mexican and US governments and his claims that the Sinaloa Cartel's leaders had provided US federal agents with information about rival Mexican"
"appointees at the Justice Department in ""gunwalking"". Rather, Operation Fast and Furious was just one of four such operations conducted over five years during the Bush and Obama administrations, and was only ""the latest in a series of fatally flawed operations run by ATF agents in Phoenix and the Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office"". In May, it was reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General had begun to investigate Fast and Furious, with a report expected in October. The DHS had Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents assigned to the operation after becoming involved in late 2009."
"to walk into Mexico. Altogether, about 2,000 firearms were bought by straw purchasers during Fast and Furious. These included AK-47 variants, Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles, .38 caliber revolvers, and FN Five-sevens. , 389 had been recovered in the US and 276 had been recovered in Mexico. The rest remained on the streets, unaccounted for. , the total number of recovered firearms was 710. Most of the guns went to the Sinaloa Cartel, while others made their way to El Teo and La Familia. Although most weapons were purchased by suspects under investigation by the program, there have been reports"
"the U.S. and 195 Fast and Furious origin guns were recovered by Mexican police at Mexican crime scenes. In 2010, Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered in a shootout in Arizona with drug cartel members. Cartel member Manuel Osorio-Arellanes pleaded guilty in 2012 to first-degree murder in the case and was sentenced in 2014 to 30 years in prison; according to Osorio-Arellanes, four other cartel members perpetrated the attack. Two rifles from the ""Fast and Furious"" operation were found at the scene of the crime, but there is no evidence proving that Terry was killed with either of those"
"the U.S. Attorney's Office—to eliminate a trafficking organization—and the belief that confronting subjects and seizing firearms could compromise that goal."" By June 2010, suspects had purchased 1,608 firearms at a cost of over US$1 million at Phoenix-area gun shops. At that time, the ATF was also aware of 179 of those weapons being found at crime scenes in Mexico, and 130 in the United States. As guns traced to Fast and Furious began turning up at violent crime scenes in Mexico, ATF agents stationed there also voiced opposition. On the evening of December 14, 2010, U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian"
"stated that Osorio was known by the ATF to be a straw purchaser months before he purchased the gun used to kill Zapata, leading them to question the Bureau's Operation Fast and Furious leading to the illegal purchase and export of the murder weapon. Mexican functionaries mentioned that although their efforts have been significant, without full cooperation from the United States in preventing the drug consumption in the U.S., the flow of American weapons and of cash south of the border into the hands of the Mexican criminals, there will not be any significant improvement in dismantling the drug cartels."
"after they arrive in Mexico end up in cartel hands. In 2011 CBS News reported ""The Mexican military recently reported nearly 9,000 police weapons ""missing."""" A 2009 U.S. State Department audit showed 26 percent of guns sold legally to governments in Mexico and Central America were diverted to the wrong hands. ATF Project Gunrunner has a stated official objective to stop the sale and export of guns from the United States into Mexico in order to deny Mexican drug cartels the firearms considered ""tools of the trade"". However, since at least February 2008 under Project Gunrunner, Operations ""Fast and Furious"","
"considered ""tools of the trade"". However, since 2006 under Operation Wide Receiver (2006-2007), Hernandez Case (2007), Medrano Case (2008) and Operation Fast and Furious (2009-2011), the Phoenix offices of ATF and USAO did the opposite by permitting, encouraging and facilitating 'straw purchase' firearm sales to traffickers, and allowing the guns to 'walk' and be transported to Mexico. The gun-rights group Gun Owners of America accused the ATF of attempting to ""boost statistics of seized firearms with American commercial provenance from Mexican crime scenes."" In October 2011, documents were released that indicated Justice Department officials were sent memos in regard to"
"guns that are traced."" Under operations ""Fast and Furious,"" ""Too Hot to Handle,"" and ""Wide Receiver,"" indictments show that the Phoenix ATF Office, over protests from the gun dealers and some ATF agents involved and without notifying Mexican authorities, facilitated the sale of over 2,500 firearms (AK-47 rifles, FN 5.7mm pistols, and .50 caliber rifles) to traffickers destined for Mexico. Many of these same guns are being recovered from crime scenes in Arizona and throughout Mexico, which is artificially inflating ATF's eTrace statistics of U.S. origin guns seized in Mexico. One gun is alleged to be the weapon used by"
"ATF agents followed the weapons to a storage facility; then surveillance was terminated without interdiction. The Fernandez case was dropped from Fast and Furious after it was determined that Fernandez was not connected to Mexican cartels and had ceased buying guns for resale. Since the end of Operation Fast and Furious, related firearms have continued to be discovered in criminal hands. As reported in September 2011, the Mexican government stated that an undisclosed number of guns found at about 170 crime scenes were linked to Fast and Furious. U.S. Representative Darrell Issa (R–Calif.–49) estimated that more than 200 Mexicans were"
"traffickers within the United States. The Jacob Chambers Case began in October 2009 and eventually became known in February 2010 as ""Operation Fast and Furious"" after agents discovered Chambers and the other suspects under investigation belonged to a car club. The stated goal of allowing these purchases was to continue to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher-level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels, with the expectation that this would lead to their arrests and the dismantling of the cartels. The tactic was questioned during the operations by a number of people, including ATF field agents and"
"the transactions to elucidate the supply chain and gather intelligence. The gun-rights group Gun Owners of America accused the ATF of attempting to ""boost statistics of seized firearms with American commercial provenance from Mexican crime scenes."" In 2011, KNXV-TV reported that weapons linked to the controversial ATF strategy were recovered in four police seizures of drugs and guns in the Phoenix area (two in Glendale, two in Phoenix). As of 2011 report, total of 372 Fast and Furious firearms were recovered in the United States, and 195 were recovered in Mexico. In 2010, Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered"
"and the death of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata on February 15, 2011. The gun used to kill Zapata was purchased by Otilio Osorio in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas (outside the area of responsibility for the ATF Phoenix field division which conducted Fast and Furious), and then smuggled into Mexico. Congressional investigators have stated that Osorio was known by the ATF to be a straw purchaser months before he purchased the gun used to kill Zapata, leading them to question ATF surveillance tactics and to suspect a Texas-based operation similar to Fast and Furious. In addition"
"basic ineptitude of these officials [who ordered the Fast and Furious operation] caused the death of my brother and surely thousands more victims."" Her brother, Mario, had been kidnapped, tortured and killed by cartel hit men in October 2010. Later, two AK-47 rifles found among the several weapons recovered after a gunfight between police and cartel members were traced to the Fast and Furious program. Mexican Congressman Humberto Benítez Treviño, a former attorney general, called Fast and Furious ""a bad business that got out of hand"". He had also characterized it as ""an undercover program that wasn't properly controlled"". Like"
"be transported to Mexico. This has resulted in considerable controversy. When U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered 14 December 2010, suspicions centered on ""Fast and Furious"" weapons. The break in the case can be traced to a 22 December 2010 posting on the Forums (Message Board) of the CleanUpATF web site by ""1desertrat"", who stated ""One of these [""Fast and Furious""] rifles is rumored to have been linked to the recent killing of a Border Patrol Officer in Nogales, AZ."" In response to pressures by Mike Vanderboegh, ATF Special Agents Vince A. Cefalu and Jay Dobyns, among others,"
"he has been accepted as an expert witness in federal courts on Outrageous Government Conduct, Informants, and Racial Profiling. In 2008 (three years before Operation Fast and Furious became publicly known) Castillo told reporter Bill Conroy that agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents were participating in the smuggling of high powered weapons into Mexico. According to Castillo the source of that information was a government informer who was later murdered. In March 2008, Celerino Castillo was arrested for selling firearms without a permit (selling legally-purchased weapons without a firearms-dealer permit). He claimed at that"
"8,400 lb of cocaine and 3,200 lb of marijuana, the apprehension and repatriation of 950 illegal migrants attempting to entire south Florida and Puerto Rico and the apprehension of numerous smugglers responsible for these illegal ventures, the dramatic rescue of a woman adrift at sea for more than two days in the Mona Pass following the capsizing of the migrant vessel she was attempting to illegally enter the US aboard, and the delivery of 34,000 lb of humanitarian supplies to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic (DR) to assist victims of flooding in that country and eastern Haiti."
"transported them to Mexico [are] false. ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico.” On February 28, Attorney General Eric Holder requested that the Department of Justice's Inspector General begin an investigation of Fast and Furious. On March 22, 2011, President Barack Obama appeared on Univision and spoke about the ""gunwalking"" controversy. He said that neither he nor Attorney General Holder authorized Fast and Furious. He also stated, ""There may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made, and if that's the case then we'll find out"
"home of Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, a prominent Sinaloa Cartel member, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Torres Marrufo was indicted, but evaded law enforcement for a brief time. Finally, on February 4, 2012, Marrufo was arrested by the Mexican Police. On May 29, 2011, four Mexican Federal Police helicopters attacked a cartel compound, where they were met with heavy fire, including from a .50 caliber rifle. According to a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, this rifle is likely linked to Fast and Furious. There have been questions raised over a possible connection between Fast and Furious"
"had been previously reassigned. The report also said that Fast and Furious resulted from a change in strategy by the Obama Administration. The Justice Department was dismissive of the report, saying that it contained ""distortions"" and ""debunked conspiracy theories,"" and that ""gunwalking"" tactics dated back to 2006. DOJ spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler, while critical of the report, did credit it for acknowledging that the idea for ""gun walking""—allowing illegal sales of weapons on the border—originated under the Republican administration before Eric Holder took office in 2009. Schmaler noted that Holder moved swiftly to replace the ATF's management and instill reforms. On"
"go-fast boats, fishing vessels, buses, rail cars, tractor trailers and automobiles. He was arrested by the Mexican Army on 18 March 2009 and extradited on 18 February 2010 to Chicago to face federal charges. He filed a guilty plea agreement and agreed to cooperate with government on 8 November 2018. In the late 1980s, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration believed the Sinaloa Cartel was the largest drug trafficking organization operating in Mexico. By the mid-1990s, according to one court opinion, it was believed to be the size of the Medellín Cartel during its prime. The Sinaloa Cartel was believed"
"Chapo"" Guzmán, after his January 2016 capture, was associated with the Fast and Furious operation. The Justice Department confirmed that the .50-caliber rifle was bought in July 2010 in a straw purchase by someone not known to the ATF at the time, and stated the weapon was not associated with any other crime. In a letter to Congressional leaders, Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik, head of the Justice Department's legislative affairs office, wrote, ""ATF and the department deeply regret that firearms associated with Operation Fast and Furious have been used by criminals in the commission of violent crimes, particularly crimes"
"cooperating licensed gun dealers. During Operation Fast and Furious, the largest ""gunwalking"" probe, the ATF monitored the sale of about 2,000 firearms, of which only 710 were recovered . A number of straw purchasers have been arrested and indicted; however, as of October 2011, none of the targeted high-level cartel figures had been arrested. Guns tracked by the ATF have been found at crime scenes on both sides of the Mexico–United States border, and the scene where United States Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in December 2010. The ""gunwalking"" operations became public in the aftermath of Terry's murder."
"ATF SAC from June 2006 to May 2011, would later play a major role in Operation Fast and Furious. The Hernandez case was referenced in a briefing paper prepared for Attorney General Michael Mukasey prior to his meeting with the Mexican Attorney General Medina Mora on November 16, 2007. The paper stated, ""ATF has recently worked jointly with Mexico on the first-ever attempt to have a controlled delivery of weapons being smuggled into Mexico by a major arms trafficker"" and that ""the first attempts at this controlled delivery have not been successful"". The paper also stated, ""ATF would like to"
"taken into police custody. Operation Diablo Express Operation ""Diablo Express"" was a cross-border raid launched on 29 January 2016, by a combined force of Mexican and American police to apprehend members of the Sinaloa Cartel in Lukeville, Arizona, and the neighboring border town Sonoyta, in northwestern Sonora. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokeswoman Gillian M. Christensen; the Sinaloa cartel ""cell"" targeted in Sonoyta and the adjacent Lukeville area were responsible for the ""importation of millions of pounds of illegal drugs, including marijuana, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine"" into the United States, as well as the smuggling of ""millions of"
"loading of planes carrying 600–1200 kilograms of cocaine and the receipt of money and automatic weapons as payment. The state department also alleges that Márquez established the FARC's policies for directing and controlling the production, manufacture, and distribution of hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States and the world; the ""taxation"" of the drug trade in Colombia to raise funds for the FARC; and the murder of hundreds of people who violated or interfered with the FARC's cocaine policies and/or political agenda. The U.S. Department of State has offered a reward of up to $5 million for information"
"least 44 weapons purchased through straw buyers, was sentenced to 100 months in prison. On November 23, 2012, two firearms linked to the ATF were found at the scene of a shootout between Sinaloa cartel members and the Mexican military. One of the weapons was a Kalashnikov style WASR-10 rifle trafficked by Fast and Furious suspect Uriel Patino, and the other was an FN Herstal pistol originally purchased by an ATF agent. Mexican beauty queen Maria Susana Flores Gamez and four others were killed. One of the nineteen guns Mexican authorities said they found at the hideout of Joaquín ""El"
"allow guns to walk and then disappear. ATF agents assigned to Phoenix from other districts to work on Fast and Furious were critical of the operation. There have been allegations of ""gunwalking"" in at least 10 cities in five states. The most widely known and controversial operations took place in Arizona under the ATF's Phoenix, Arizona field division. The first known ATF ""gunwalking"" operation to Mexican drug cartels, named Operation Wide Receiver, began in early 2006 and ran into late 2007. Licensed dealer Mike Detty of Mad Dawg Global informed the ATF of a suspicious gun purchase that took place"
"northwest of Mexico. The Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, commented on the operation in August 2014, announcing that 363 smugglers and their associates had been arrested and more than $800,000 in illicit payments seized. Operation Coyote Operation ""Coyote"" was a United States Department of Homeland Security effort to track and seize revenue generated by Mexican cartels in the human smuggling industry along the United States-Mexico border. From June to September 2014, U.S. agents seized $950,000 in 504 accounts at undisclosed banks in Arizona, Texas and Maryland. Homeland Security also reported that in this time period, human smuggling generated $50"
"that month, documents showed that some ATF agents discussed using Fast and Furious to provide anecdotal cases to support controversial new rules about gun sales. The regulation, called Demand Letter 3, would require 8,500 firearms dealers in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas that ""have a significant number of crime guns traced back to them from Mexico"" to report multiple rifle sales. Investigations by Congress and the DOJ Inspector General continued into 2012. In January, Patrick Cunningham, who was the criminal division chief at the Phoenix office of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona and has since"